A Different World (20 page)

One by one, the men came back from wherever they had been serving and tried settling back into civilian life. For some it was easy, for others, almost impossible. One of Greta Sadler’s sons returned from Japanese captivity towards the end of the year, but he didn’t know what had happened to his brother. Three months later she learnt that he, too, was on his way home. Both young men were painfully thin and their stomachs could not take the good food Greta dished up for them. Peace was going to take some adjustment on everyone’s part.

Nearly all the London children had left Cottlesham, although Tommy and Beattie remained. Agnes had not been to see them for a couple of months and Louise wondered why. It wasn’t that she wanted to see the children go, she had become very fond of them, but surely they should be back with their mother by now?

She learnt the reason for this when Agnes Carter arrived one evening towards the end of August, accompanied by an American sergeant, a bomber pilot in the United States Army Air Force, whose name was Russ Forrester. He was tall, dark and smart in his uniform and he smiled a lot, mostly at Agnes. She was looking exceptionally smart herself in a new fur coat and green felt hat with a matching feather. She wore sheer nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes and rather more make-up than when she had come visiting before. There were some people who were not looking drab.

‘Russ is my fiancé,’ she said as she introduced him to Louise, Jenny and Stan. ‘I’ve brought him to meet the children. We are
going to take them away for a few days for a little holiday so they can get to know each other.’

‘We’ll take off tomorrow morning,’ Russ said. ‘And bring them back next Saturday, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Of course,’ Jenny said, giving Louise a meaningful look. ‘I am sure they will enjoy it.’

‘Where are they?’ Agnes asked.

‘They’ve gone to bed, but I doubt they’re asleep. They will have heard you arrive.’

‘Let’s go up to them,’ Agnes said, and led Russ from the room.

‘Well, that’s a turn up for the books,’ Jenny said when they were out of earshot. ‘What do you think the children will make of it?’

‘No idea, but they are used to Americans, aren’t they? There’s enough of them round here.’

‘Yes, but not ones who want to marry their mother.’

‘I suppose something like it had to happen,’ Louise said. ‘Agnes is only in her late thirties and she’s not a bad-looking woman, especially when she’s dressed to the nines. I wonder where she got that fur coat.’

‘I expect he bought it for her. You can get anything if you’ve the money to pay for it.’

They learned at breakfast next day that Agnes was planning a wedding later in the year and would take her children to make their home in America. ‘Russ has to have written permission from his commanding officer to marry,’ Agnes told them, smiling at Russ who was devouring eggs and bacon, oblivious to the fact that it was a whole week’s ration for two people. ‘Until that’s signed we can’t arrange the wedding. I was wondering …’ She paused and turned to Jenny. ‘Do you think you can keep the children until then?’

‘Of course.’

Bill Young took Agnes, Russ and the children to the station in his taxi. Tommy was a little subdued. Louise realised he was torn between wanting his mother to himself and the excitement of going on holiday to a real hotel. Beattie was happy to go along with whatever was suggested, especially as the American had brought her a new doll, dressed far more grandly than she was, in lace and frills. Tommy had been given a baseball bat with the promise that Russ would teach him the game. Angela was left without her playmates but it meant she would have her mother to herself.

Their departure left Louise feeling flat. She was glad to see the end of the conflict, the end of death and destruction but she had no illusions about the difficulties they would be facing. So much was bound to change, though it was slower coming than some people liked. The troops would come home eventually, though there was a strict order in the way they would be demobbed; guns, aeroplanes and ships no longer needed to fight would be laid up. The Americans, like Russ, would go home. And that inevitably led to thoughts of Jan. Would he leave her? Would she be able to keep her job? Where would she live? The London children, who had not yet left, would go home and Jenny would almost certainly want her bedrooms back. She had been talking for some time of making the Pheasant into a proper country hotel. And what was she to do about her mother? All these questions had to be faced, but the overriding one was what Jan would do.

The euphoria of the celebrations for the end of the war had passed Jan by. London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Oslo, Copenhagen and Moscow might celebrate, with singing and dancing in floodlit streets, but in Warsaw, empty, defeated, ruined Warsaw, there was nothing but darkness and bitterness and rows and rows of wooden crosses.

Like his fellow Poles Jan felt out on a limb. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had met at the Tsar’s old palace in Yalta the previous February and decided the fate of Europe between them. Germany was divided into four zones of occupation under the British, American, French and Russians. Berlin was similarly split. And, as he had predicted, Stalin had got his way over the boundary with eastern Poland. The land he had annexed when he invaded in 1939 was now designated Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine, part of the Soviet Union. Poland had been compensated for the loss of nearly half its eastern territory with a chunk of Germany in the west, which meant whole populations were on the move westwards. The Polish administration in London was no longer recognised as the government of Poland and the Soviet puppet government had been formally accepted by the Western Allies as the interim government until elections could be held, which Stalin had promised would be ‘free and unfettered’ and held a month after the end of the war. Few of Jan’s comrades believed that.

All over Europe there were thousands of people in the wrong place, wandering about like lost souls with nowhere to go. Camps had been set up for them until they could be helped to go back to where they belonged, or to find new homes elsewhere. They were called displaced persons, which exactly described how Jan felt.

Agnes had decided to be married in Cottlesham. ‘I prefer the Reverend Capstick to your father’s replacement,’ she had told Louise on a previous visit. ‘Besides, people I used to call my friends frown on me for marrying a Yank.’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno. Perhaps they think I should wear black for the rest of my life. They don’t like to see me enjoying myself.’

‘Perhaps they’re just jealous.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, I’ve asked the rector if he’ll marry us and he said yes, so that’s what we’re going to do. Stan said he’d give me away. Will you be a maid of honour?’

‘I’d love to.’

‘Beattie will be a bridesmaid. Will you let Angela be another one?’

‘She’s very small, not yet four.’

‘I know, but she’s so pretty and I don’t want her to feel left out. And you’ll be there to look after her.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘This wedding is going to be different from my first. I was three months gone with Tommy and we had to get married. It was done in a
registry office with only a couple of Dan’s friends for witnesses. My parents had washed their hands of me.’

Louise knew what that felt like. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Water under the bridge now. They both got killed in the Blitz. There’s only me and the kids left. This is like a first wedding for me, so I want it to be special.’

‘Then we’ll do our best to make it special, Agnes.’

‘You and Jenny are better friends to me than all my neighbours in Edgware. You understand, don’t you, about wanting to make a fresh start?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Louise said, wishing she could do the same.

Jan didn’t talk about it. It was almost as if he were afraid to bring the problem out into the open. The longer he was silent, the more she thought he was intent on going back to Poland. Would he stay if she asked it of him? Had she any right to do so? He was a Catholic and Catholics did not divorce. If he stayed she would still be an unmarried mother and would remain so until the end of her days. Unless his wife were dead. That was not beyond the bounds of possibility, but he would have to be sure.

In the meantime, she had to support Agnes and help to make sure the wedding went off without a hitch. Besides a crowd of Russ’s friends, Jan and half the village had been invited and Jenny had been kept busy organising the catering, not made any easier because everything was still rationed and, for the first time ever, bread was rationed. Queues and shortages were as bad as ever. They were lucky Russ was able to buy almost anything from the PX stores and he brought cheese, ham, tinned fruit, as well as dried fruit and icing sugar, so that Jenny was able to make a real wedding cake.

The wedding dress was made from parachute silk which Russ had also provided. Parachutes had to be flawless, he told them, and this one had been rejected. White, they decided, would not be
appropriate, so Jenny dyed a swathe of it powder blue. Something borrowed would be a rather flamboyant hat with a wide brim and a big artificial rose on the front which had belonged to Jenny’s mother. ‘I don’t know why I kept it,’ she said. ‘Except that it seemed such a shame to throw it away. It was part of Mum’s outfit for my wedding.’

Beattie and Angela would be in pink dresses, also of dyed parachute silk, with tiny silk rosebuds in a coronet, made up by Louise, and they would carry more in little baskets. Being January, they might be cold in thin frocks so she and Jenny had knitted white ponchos for them. Louise went off to Norwich and spent a whole Saturday searching for something for herself and came back with a dove-grey silk dress and matching jacket that cost her five guineas as well as fifteen clothing coupons.

Everyone was up early on the day of the wedding, all getting in each other’s way. Beattie was sick with excitement and came down to breakfast looking like a ghost. ‘You can’t go to church looking like that,’ Agnes said. ‘Perhaps a little rouge …’

‘A spot of fresh air should do the trick,’ Jenny said. ‘Stan’s taking the pony and trap into Swaffham to pick up the flowers. She can go with him. It will keep her occupied until it’s time to get her dressed.’

And so Beattie went to Swaffham and Tommy, bored with it all, went for a walk. It was frosty, the cobwebs hanging from dead stalk to dead stalk glittered like jewels. So far there had only been a light dusting of snow, nothing like the first winter he was here when Stan had pulled them to school on a sledge. It seemed an age ago, a whole lifetime. Now everything was up in the air.

He had left his mum having her hair done and Miss fluttering round her and Aunt Jenny sorting out the food. Getting all worked up over it, they were. As for the navy pinstriped suit
they had bought for him, he hated it. Why couldn’t he go to church in his school blazer and flannels? It wasn’t as if he had a major role to play. All he was required to do was show people to their seats.

He wasn’t at all sure about this wedding idea. The last time he had seen his father, he had said, ‘You’re the man of the house while I’m away, son, so you look after your mum and sister until I come back.’ How was he to know he would never come back or that they’d be evacuated? He had tried to look after Beattie, but he’d failed when it came to his mother. He thought she had gone off her head a bit. It was Russ this and Russ that, the whole time; she had no time for anyone else. So instead of going home to Edgware, they were going to be shipped off to America.

He wondered what that would be like. All he knew of America was what Russ had told him about his home in Illinois and the cowboys and Indians he saw at the pictures in Swaffham on a Saturday morning, both of which he was sensible enough to take with a pinch of salt. And what about school? He was due to take his school certificate in June and had been hoping for a scholarship so that he could go into the sixth form and then to college. Miss had been helping him to swot for it.

He would miss her when they left. She was all right, was Miss Fairhurst, and he liked Jan, though he couldn’t say his name properly let alone spell it. Would Miss marry him and go to Poland? Jan had showed him where it was on the map and told him a little about it. Warsaw seemed a bit like London, what with the bombing and all, but German troops had never come to London. Now they never would. The war was over.

It was difficult to remember what it was like before it began. They hadn’t been starving or dressed in rags, but he didn’t think they had had much in the way of possessions. Being in Cottlesham had
shown him a different life and he liked it. Would he like America? Russ didn’t seem short of money and he always came loaded with presents and today he would marry his mum and he had been told he should call him ‘Dad’. He’d told them right out, he couldn’t do that, Russ wasn’t his dad. His dad was at the bottom of the Atlantic. Mum had been angry but he had stuck to his guns and, to give Russ his due, he had agreed that calling him ‘Uncle’ would do.

They were going on honeymoon after the wedding. Tommy wasn’t sure where but he and Beattie would stop with Aunt Jenny until they came back and arrangements were made to go to America. A lot of GIs had married over here and the American government was going to lay on special transport for all the brides and their children to go to America. They would be going on the
Queen Mary
. Dad had taken him on board one of his ships once, when he was little, but it had been on the quayside; he hadn’t actually been to sea. Half of him was looking forward to it, the other half was apprehensive about the future. Supposing it didn’t work out? Supposing he couldn’t go to college? He had set his heart on being an aeronautical engineer.

He looked up from kicking a stone to see Jan coming towards him. ‘There you are, old chap,’ he greeted him. ‘Your mother is worried about you. It’s time you got ready.’

‘I was just coming.’

They turned to walk side by side, off the common and along familiar lanes bordered by leafless hedges where here and there a few red berries hung for the birds, to the pub which had been his home for the last six years. He would miss it when they left, miss the people too.

‘Do you think it will be all right?’ Tommy asked Jan. ‘Going to America, I mean.’

‘Are you worried about it?’

‘How do I know Mum will be happy? It’s a long way to go if she doesn’t like it.’

‘I’m sure she has thought of all that and decided that’s what she wants. She seems very happy about it, so don’t spoil it by being gloomy, eh?’

‘OK. Are you going to marry Miss Fairhurst?’

‘That’s a very personal question, young man.’

Tommy sighed. ‘I just wondered. Will you go back to Poland?’

‘I don’t know. I might.’

‘You wouldn’t go and leave Miss and Angela behind, would you?’

‘She might not wish to come.’

‘Then you had better stay here, don’t you think?’

Jan did not answer that. The boy was old for his fifteen years. He had grown up in wartime and learnt to shoulder responsibility at an early age. Now he was worrying about the future, as they all were. And he had put his finger on the core of Jan’s unease. There were, according to estimates, some sixty thousand Poles in Britain and nearly twice that number in Allied camps overseas, many of whom, like him, had been fighting alongside Britain since 1940, and they were becoming an embarrassment to the British government. Most of them were reluctant to return to a Poland under Russian domination, certainly not before the ‘free and unfettered’ elections promised by Stalin had been held and there was a democratically elected government. It hadn’t happened yet and only the most naive believed that it ever would. But the pull of home was strong and some had decided to return.

Those left behind were being transferred from the Royal Air Force and the Polish armed forces into a Polish Resettlement Corps, whose aim was to help find employment for those who were staying. They would be on a two-year contract on full pay while they decided what they were going to do. After that the Corps would be disbanded. Jan
could foresee trouble finding jobs. There was the language barrier for a start and the lack of qualifications except fighting, and already some Poles had been turned away on the grounds that jobs were for British men being demobbed. People’s memories were short and the old antagonism was beginning to surface again. He had seen a large poster fixed to the wire surrounding the holding camp where he was quartered which proclaimed: ‘England for the English’. If he decided to stay, what could he do? He knew nothing but how to fly. Many of his comrades were talking about going to the United States, Canada or South Africa, rather than return home. It was to South Africa Jozef was heading.

His brother had written to him from Italy where he had survived the slaughter of the Battle for Monte Cassino and was with the Polish 2nd Army stationed in Rimini, an army that was mostly made up of men who had been taken prisoner when the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939 and were only released when Hitler invaded Russia. ‘Having been on the receiving end of Soviet hospitality myself,’ he had written, ‘I could have told anyone who asked what would happen. Everywhere they go, they intend to be masters and Poland is no exception. It is naive of anyone to expect them to grant democratic freedom to Poland when they do not even allow it for their own people. I shall not return. Mother and Father are dead, there is no longer an estate for me to inherit and I might as well make a new life for myself. I fought alongside the South Africans here in Italy and many of them are my friends. I think South Africa will do me very well. What are you going to do? Any news of Rulka?’

It was easy for Jozef, Jan decided; he had no wife to worry about, nor a loving girlfriend and a precious little daughter. He had been avoiding discussing it with Louise, but before long it would have to be faced.

The Pheasant was in an uproar, but in the middle of it Agnes was serene. She appeared to have no doubts about what she was doing. ‘I’m going to have a wonderful life with Russ,’ she told Louise. ‘His family have a huge farm with thousands of cattle.’ She giggled suddenly. ‘I shall be a farmer’s wife.’

Louise laughed. ‘You’re terrified of cows. I remember when you first came here, you met a herd in the lane being driven home for milking and you ran for your life.’

‘I’ll just have to get used to them, shan’t I?’ She surveyed herself in the mirror of the dressing table. ‘Do I look all right?’

‘Lovely.’

‘You look smashing. What about Beattie and Angela?’

‘They are both ready. Beattie is fine now and reading Angela a story to keep her out of mischief.’ The sound of someone running upstairs came to them. Louise went to the door. ‘It’s Jan and Tommy.’

‘Tommy!’ shouted his mother. ‘Where have you been?’

The boy appeared in the doorway. ‘Out for a walk.’

‘Well, go and get changed. You should be on your way to the church by now. Mr Young will be here to take the bridesmaids any time now.’ Agnes was going to church in Stan’s pony and trap suitably decorated with garlands and ribbons.

Tommy disappeared and Louise noticed Jan behind him. ‘Will you make sure he gets to church on time?’

‘Yes, of course. You are looking exceptionally lovely, sweetheart.’

‘Well, it will be your turn next,’ Agnes called from behind Louise.

Neither commented. Jan dashed off to make sure Tommy looked his best and they both took up their usher’s duties, leaving Louise feeling a little down. She pulled herself together and
accompanied Agnes down to the sitting room until it was time to leave for the church. Today was Agnes’s day and she would not spoil it by being sad.

The wedding was a triumph. The church was full and the villagers and Russ’s American colleagues mingled happily together. The bride was radiant, the bridegroom was looking pleased with himself, the bridesmaids and the best man remembered what they were supposed to do and the Reverend Capstick delivered a homily which was neither too short nor too long. Afterwards they all crammed into the Pheasant for the reception. Not until the newly-weds had left for their honeymoon and everyone else had gone home and the children were in bed, could Jan and Louise have any time to themselves. They went up to the room they shared.